Seasons of Grief and Glory
by SydnieWren
Summary: The nexus of grief and glory is pain. As Byakuya mourns his wife, Gin rises to prominence as a vice-captain. Black and white, good and evil, order and chaos, both suffer their seasons of grief and glory. AizenxGin. GinxKira. Dubcon, oral, anal, violence, noncon, prostitution, more to come. Hard M.
1. Spring

**Hey folks! Hope everyone is having a good summer. This is sort of an odd piece for me, as it's sort of revisionist history. The story will progress through four seasonal parts, with each one following Gin's ascension to vice-captain of the 5th along with Byakuya's mourning over his wife. I don't think the timelines quite match up with Bleach's canon timeline, so apologies for that! But I hope it's enjoyable anyhow.  
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**Disclaimer: I own nothing.  
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**Warnings: oral, dubious consent, Gin's dirty mouth.  
**

* * *

They don't live long

But you'd never know it -

The cicada's cry.

_Basho_

**I. Spring**

It is early spring when she dies. The new blossoms are still tender and not yet safe from a final freeze. Though the garden is green and suffuse with ready buds, mist haunts them at dawn, and the evenings are cold yet.

Her hand is small and the joints are uncannily pronounced. Underneath the wilted, colorless skin, the net of blue veins slows its work, and her pulse grows weak and irregular. Byakuya can feel her flesh cool and her trembling still. Years ago his mother told him that the dead are much lighter than the living because they are bereft of their heavy spirits; but Byakuya now finds her hand slipping from his palm clumsily, weighty as stone.

He will never precisely remember whether he called, at that moment, for someone or not, though he thinks he must have: servants congregated at the door and rushed in shortly after.

* * *

The persimmon flowers in the spring but bears fruit late in the fall, after every leaf and bloom has fallen. All season, flower by flower, the tree rarefies, and when its foliage dissolves into the ground beneath it, eats its own beauty and sighs bitter fruit.

This tree does not belong to Gin. It belongs to someone else, or maybe to no one; it grows stranded near the fifth division headquarters among a patch of weeds. He does not tend it as much as he steals from it, never returning the effort he takes. Today, as he peers among the flowers he glimpses plumes of smoke drifting upward into the pale spring morning.

At first he thinks there must be a fire, and he is intrigued; but he can smell incense, and he realizes that it must be a funeral, which is not half so interesting as a fire. Fires have uncertain outcomes, while funerals are the bitter fruit of every rarefied tree.

* * *

The most terrible fact about the funeral is not the tangible presence of death, but the conspicuous absence of mourning. Byakuya watches the faces of his relatives drift by like ghosts. They scowled at his wedding and now they subtly smile, or he believes that they do, believes that they barely suppress laughter as they proceed past him to light sticks of incense.

His grandfather holds the urn and apprises him with a clear, cool gaze that exhorts him to be strong.

It is a very still, sunny morning. Overhead, a few crows caw and flutter past, alighting in the branches of nearby pear trees.

Byakuya has seen this gaze before. It indicts with one blink and exonerates with the other. As often as he was punished as a boy, this look fixed him in place, rarely requiring any explanation.

What was hours ago the body of Hisana and days ago the woman herself is now a furrow of course ash and fragments of bone. With long sticks Byakuya captures a splinter of ankle, and shudders. There is no one beside him to take the bone and deposit it into the urn, and so he must do it himself; it is at this moment that he begins to weep.

* * *

Night steals into Aizen's apartment through the slightly parted doors. The mid-spring air is cool and suffuse with the perfume of flowers.

Gin nudges his way inside, his hands tucked into his sleeves.

"Workin' as always," he observes. Aizen scarcely glances up from his writing.

"You're late," he remarks.

"Got held up," comes the explanation, and then, curious: "Did somebody die?"

"I should have thought you would have heard," Aizen replies, tapping excess ink off on the lip of a well. "It was Kuchiki's wife."

"What a shame!" Gin laments, "Lucky for him, there's a hundred more where that came from. There's always more cunt in the slums, given yer willin' to hunt around."

"So I'm told."

Gin slinks to his preferred corner and lowers himself to a slumping recline, his fingers trailing over the ash in Aizen's incense burner.

"What're you workin' on there?" he asks after a long moment, growing bored.

"Your letter of recommendation," Aizen answers evenly, "to become a vice-captain. Specifically, my vice-captain."

"What happened to the old one?" Gin wonders.

"Nothing _yet_."

Gin grins lazily, opens his kosode, and flattens his palm against his stomach. Come nightfall he always realizes how long it's been since he's eaten. It aggravates his bloodlust to some degree, and makes him reckless.

Aizen is aware of this.

"So that's it, then?" Gin asks, "Jus' take him out and it's all mine?"

"Not quite," Aizen says, "You will need to spar with a few select captains and demonstrate that you have achieved bankai."

"Aah, sounds dangerous."

"I have full faith and confidence in your abilities," Aizen assures him, clearly reading from his carefully crafted letter.

"Happy to hear it," Gin smiles.

After long moments, Aizen puts away his brush and dries his ink stone. Gin watches with rapt attention, enthralled, as always, by the agility with which Aizen attends to even the smallest of details. His fingers are as dexterous and precise as they are lethal.

He rises without a word and closes his doors quietly, stilling the breeze in the room. The scent of incense begins to build.

Gin sits up as he crosses the room and watches, smiling, as he comes near. Aizen threads his fingers in Gin's hair and draws the other man's cheek to rest against his hip.

"Tell me, Gin," he is saying, and Gin can feel the vibration of his low voice through his hakama, "why I hesitate to stake my reputation on you."

"Guess I'm irresponsible," he murmurs. Aizen strokes his hair and agrees with a hum of assent.

"You are unreliable, unstable and, in a variety of ways, immature. I asked you to be here on the hour, and you were here more than a quarter after. You see, you can't even be punctual on your days off."

"Sorry," Gin whispers, his grin softening to an eerie blankness.

Both hands thread in his hair now. Aizen gently turns his cheek, bringing Gin's lips in line with the hardness forming underneath his hakama.

"I know that you are capable of obeying," Aizen says, and he means it, though there are unspoken caveats: not very well, and not for very long.

Gin hums noncommittally. He leaves his arms at his side.

Aizen's hakama loosen around his hips and fall just enough to lift his half-hard sex from his clothing. He tips Gin's head back by the chin and the other parts his lips dutifully. He _can_, after all, obey.

Aizen finishes hardening in Gin's mouth. And he watches, cool and impassive, as his sex sinks deeper between Gin's lips. He always watches.

He sees everything.

* * *

Fortunately Hisana never had very many things. Material objects had never meant as much to her as the immaterial things Byakuya's wealth offered: security, stability, safety.

But there are a few things that he has to confront when he arrives back at the quiet manor after the funeral. It is dusk, the sun comes slant through the windows and glows faintly behind the doors.

Her comb is still near her pillow, which lies at the top of her mat, which is obscured beneath the blanket she herself embroidered some time ago. It all smells faintly of her, though the dominant scent is that of sickness and wasting.

Byakuya knows that he should not go near any of it, or he will never part from it.

And he wishes, even as he summons servants to take her things away, that his mother were here to comfort him, or better yet his father, who had always been a slight and gentle man.

Servants flood in and Byakuya slips out behind them, muttering that he would prefer that all Hisana's possessions be stored out of sight for the time being.

He paces the corridors and thinks of Sojun, his father, to whom his impulsive streak has always been attributed. In life he had been glad and kind; in death, he is the source of all Byakuya's tenderness, all his love. When he met Hisana, he saw Sojun in her eyes; when she passed away, the same sting of cruel grief arose in him, and he finds himself stunned by it.

He had not thought one person could be expected to suffer such grief twice in one lifetime.

Servants bear away Hisana's possessions without any word to him, though they bow as the file past. Now again his room is empty, and it is _his_ room, not _their_ room. And Byakuya understands even as he enters it and closes the door behind him that even when he occupies it, the room is still empty: here he lost his grandfather's favor and his family's honor, his virginity and his first love, his hopes for the future and all his best intentions.

So much loss had channeled through the room Byakuya thinks it might carve a canyon into it; the crickets sing so loud outside that he can hardly hear his own sobbing.

* * *

**That's it for part one! I'm interested to see if anybody reads this - it seems like such an oddball fic! Anyhow, if you read it, I really hope you liked it! As always, please review!**


	2. Early Summer: Monsoon

**Hey folks! Back with chapter 2. I don't think this fic has much of a following, so I'd like to personally thank those of you who've hung in there with me!**

**lye tea: I'm glad you find it interesting! I think that's probably the best compliment one could receive on a fic like this. I hope this chapter heightens the interest!**

**honeyMellon: Ah, my loyal reader! Thanks for reading, and for the encouragement! I hope you like this chapter - next is coming soon! :)  
**

**PhreshxxxBear: I'm also a major fan of both Gin and Byakuya. There's a real symmetry between them that I hope to get at here! Thanks for the read!  
**

**Disclaimer: Don't own Bleach.  
**

**Warnings: Violence, suggested rape, suggested prostitution.  
**

* * *

In this world,

We walk on the roof of hell

Gazing at flowers.

_Kobayashi Issa_

Gin buys a wedge of watermelon on the way back from Rukongai and eats it all the way to Aizen's doorstep, where he abandons the rind. It is perfectly pale green and sucked clean to the quick: no one can eat like the once starved.

"Ohayou," Gin calls, rapping on the doorframe. He sweeps his fingers flatly across his forehead and gathers up a handful of sweat.

There is no one home. He slips into the cool shade of the apartment and shrugs off his soiled kosode. Aizen will not mind, he thinks, if he naps here for a while. He has obeyed, which will win him favor at least for a while, long enough to sleep through the worst of the midday heat.

* * *

No one brings up the fact that Gin was not at work today. They are more concerned with the disappearance of Aizen's vice-captain, who only he and Gin know to be _former_. It is curious to Aizen that no one seems to have connected Gin's absence with his vice-captain's, but then again, Gin's unreliability makes periodic absences seem more normal than exceptional.

The summer evening is still and humid. Outside the restaurants and bars, laughter and conversations carry on underneath the glow of red paper lanterns. Women fan themselves; men loosen their belts. Aizen smiles genially as he passes them by.

At his doorstep he finds the wilted remains of a watermelon rind strewn with ants. And, inside, he finds Gin, half-naked and sound asleep with his sword cradled in the crook of his arm.

Aizen slides his door shut with the utmost care but still Gin stirs. He rises to his elbows, grinning crookedly.

"Did you manage?" Aizen asks, stepping over him to turn on a lamp. Gin nods.

"How?" Aizen then inquires, moving behind a screen to change into his evening yukata.

"Cut off her head," Gin answers simply. He produces her badge from the folds of his kosode.

"Seems a great deal of trouble," Aizen observes.

"She was on all fours," Gin explains, "so it wasn't so tough. Never even saw it coming."

"All fours?" Aizen has emerged with his kiseru pipe cradled in the palm of his hand.

"Couldn't let her die a virgin," comes the grinning clarification.

A flame flickers long enough to glow in the bowl of Aizen's pipe, and is then snuffed out again. The perfume of the wild orange blossoms growing along the avenue is so strong that incense would overpower the senses.

"You've done well, Gin," he congratulates finally, "I will submit all of the paperwork this week." He pauses. "There isn't any chance of anyone finding the body, is there?"

Gin confirms that there is no chance and reclines again, his head resting on the thick weave of the tatami mat.

"It's all in pieces," he assures Aizen, "little bitty pieces."

Aizen slips his glasses off and folds them on his desk. Every time he thinks they are evenly matched in cruelty, he is wrong.

* * *

When summer arrives everything turns the most brilliant shade of green. All the subtlety of springtime is lost to the white gleam of the sun. A persistent haze as thick and golden as honey hangs over the garden by mid-afternoon. Byakuya watches dragonflies lazily drag their wings through it as they skim the surface of the water.

He thinks that he can stay this way forever if he carries on with this one motion: sake jug to cup, cup to mouth. For hours he has been drinking here on his verandah with his bare feet in the sand, his thin summer yukata gathered up over his knees. Other jugs of sake have been produced and emptied and taken away to be refilled from their barrels in storage, and Byakuya suspects that more will come and go before he is finished here.

Feet stir in the threshold behind him. Byakuya does not bother to look up.

"Kuchiki-sama," a servant greets, "a visitor has arrived."

The news sets his mind abuzz.

"Who?" he demands.

"With submission sir, it is Ukitake-taichou, sir."

A long moment of silence passes during which Byakuya contemplates whether or not he can even stand to greet the captain.

"Show him in," he mutters. "And take this away. Bring tea."

The servant disappears into the shade of the manor. Byakuya feels a strange anger rise inside him at having been disrupted in his drinking, as it has provided the most consistent comfort since her passing. Mid-day visitors bent on condoling, on the other hand, have been nothing but a nuisance.

Ukitake appears in the threshold along with two servants, one guiding him and the other bearing tea.

"Ohayou, Byakuya-sama," he smiles, moving aside to allow the tea to be served. Byakuya observes him with bleary focus as he perches beside him on the verandah and graciously accepts a teacup.

"Ah," Ukitake breathes over his tea, "such warm days we've been having."

Byakuya nods.

"And how have you been, Ukitake-taichou?" he asks blankly. The bitter fact remains that Ukitake was not at Hisana's funeral, reportedly due to a bout of ill health.

"Much better," Ukitake confirms cheerfully, though it is clear from his faltering smile that he understands the source of Byakuya's resentment. He peers down into his tea for long moments, and the two of them listen to the sounds of insects buzzing and humming in the hot sun.

"I wanted to apologize," Ukitake begins again, "for, for not being there. I wasn't well."

Byakuya says nothing. Sweat has begun to form under his yukata in the small of his back. A crow lands near the edge of the pond and begins pecking at the feed thrown out for the koi. Were he sober, Byakuya would chase the pest away.

"Well then," Ukitake says with some finality, "tomorrow, then." He stands and dusts off his hakama.

"Tomorrow?" he looks up bleary-eyed as the sun frames Ukitake like a blazing halo.

"There is a meeting tomorrow evening, Byakuya-sama," the other replies, puzzled. "Aizen-taichou means to nominate a new vice-captain."

Byakuya does not even call for a servant to show his guest out, and he does not ask what happened to Aizen's sitting vice-captain, though both thoughts cross his mind, however briefly.

* * *

In the summer the meetings are held a little before dusk on account of the agreeability of the early evening temperatures. The captains and their vice captains congregate slowly at the meeting hall, some arriving early, others making their way in late. Kyoraku and Ukitake arrive side-by-side and rosy-cheeked, having stopped for a drink beforehand.

"So many fireflies out," Kyoraku is declaring, "they outnumber the stars in the heavens."

The two of them greet their respective vice-captains and sink into the lull of mid-summer conversation about nothing in particular. Unohana has recently come to favor a new variety of tea; Kaien is thinking of taking up the guitar. Ukitake is well and is grateful for all the concern; Kenpachi wishes the summer would never end, as it's better by far for sparring outdoors.

A hush passes over them when Aizen arrives with Gin. It seems only a little while ago that Gin was a promising upstart who cleaved near Aizen at all time, the top of his head barely grazing the other man's elbow. Now he strides next to his captain with the easy swinging gait of a predator, and seems to be just on the verge of surpassing his height.

"I hope we aren't late," Aizen laughs apologetically, "there's a little rain."

Eyes flicker thoughtfully to the high windows.

"Ah, it is that season," Kyoraku notes.

Gin's attention wanders from face to face and form to form as Aizen presents his reasons for nominating him as his vice-captain despite his youth and relative inexperience. A great deal of discussion arises around this matter, especially from Yamamoto, who seems to recall every precedent in the history of the Gotei 13.

At length the discussion stills and most captains seem relatively satisfied with Aizen's defense of his decision. Yamamoto grunts assent to a closing point and glances about at the gathering before raising a final objection:

"We are short one captain," he states gruffly, "and without him there can be no vote."

"Kuchiki-taichou was unwell this morning," Ukitake adds quickly, earning a variety of suspicious glances. Aizen smiles graciously.

"Ah, so we are missing Kuchiki-taichou," he observes, and though he is seething at the hitch in plans, he regards Gin with perfect serenity: "Gin, please look in on Kuchiki-taichou and see if he is well enough to cast a vote."

Yamamoto clearly hesitates before allowing the errand to be run by the candidate up for consideration, but finally agrees on the grounds that it will provide more time for private discussion. It is only by luck that Gin remembers to bow before he disappears into the rain.

* * *

This arched bridge represents the way to the island of the immortals. It had been among Hisana's favorite features of the garden: when she stood upon it and dropped breadcrumbs into the water, the fish swam up in an ivory golden mass and clamored for more. Byakuya has been drinking here for the better part of the day.

Gathering clouds give the illusion of swiftly approaching night and he does not notice. Fireflies hover among the lilies and slender fronds of eucalyptus and he looks through them into nothingness. Rain begins to fall, softly at first, and then thicker and faster, and he keeps on drinking. If he stands still, he cannot tell the blur of his vision from the blur of the rain falling into the water.

Gin knows the borders of the Kuchiki estate only because they have always been patently off-limits; he takes this opportunity to ignore formal boundaries. The front gates are naturally closed so he vaults easily over an unassuming portion of the back fence, landing in a quickly deepening pool. The grey wall of rain between him and the rest of the garden obscures all but dark shapes. Gin sweeps his fingers through his hair to clear his vision.

He passes through reeds and steps onto soaked grass. Ahead of him, through the curtains of cold rain, is a figure, and he supposes this must be Byakuya Kuchiki, nobleman and captain, embodiment of wealth and power. As Gin draws closer he sees that the man is clothed in only a pale colored yukata loosely tied at his hips. To most this would signal Byakuya's sudden abandonment of his shinigami duties.

To Gin it only means that he is unarmed.

Byakuya is shuddering in the rain. It occurs to him faintly that he freezing, that he should go inside, that his cup is now filled with rainwater and not sake. Some strange reiatsu is near, but he does not know whose or why.

When Gin reaches out to touch his shoulder, the sake cup slips from Byakuya's fingers and sinks into the rippling pool below.

"What –" Byakuya stammers, stumbling back and then grasping the rail of the bridge to stay upright; he stares wide-eyed into Gin's face and thinks he may be a ghost.

For an instant Gin's smile falters and flattens: he is unsure of what he has found. Byakuya seems to be muttering something, but rain consumes the sound. When Gin steadies him by his upper arm, he can feel him trembling beneath his drenched clothing.

Gin draws near and takes Byakuya's wrist in his hand, sliding his arm over his shoulders. In this position he can very nearly shoulder all of Byakuya's weight, which is necessary: the captain is only capable of stumbling blindly in his state.

The door is open. Gin surmises that Byakuya has been outdoors for sometime. The captain trips over the threshold and Gin lets him collapse onto the hardwood floor, scattering rain around him. His black hair, now dripping, falls around his face and clings to his pale skin as he shudders and rises falteringly to his hands and knees.

Byakuya struggles to find purchase on the floor. The water spreads over the laquer of the wood and he slips and stumbles as his surroundings spin. A terrible wave of nausea passes over him and he lurches forward as his jaw tightens and his vision blurs.

Framed by the open door, Gin stands still, hands at his side, looking down at the nobleman with vague curiosity. Through the watery clean smell of the rain and the green scents of summer he can still sense the sake, heavy and thick in the air as if he had just taken a drink himself. And this, Gin thinks, is the strength and fortitude of their world: this is the nobleman, the upright one, keeper of order and enforcer of rules.

And Gin remembers all the times that these men would pass him by as a child on their way to the brothels, how they pulled at Rangiku's clothes and offered her peaches and peonies to show them her breasts, how they breathed sake and smoke down her throat and into her hair, and she smelled like it for days.

Byakuya tries to raise his head when he hears the shifting metal sound of Gin releasing his sword, very slightly, from its sheath. His thumb rests under the hilt and he thinks of how quickly, if he were to be decisive, he could slice through Byakuya's neck. For long moments his hand lingers there on the crisscrossing threads of the hilt of his sword. It feels weighty, solid, powerful in his palm.

The rain roars behind him and sings in the rain chains hanging from the eaves of the manor, but Gin still hears the footsteps in the corridors as they rush nearer. His sword settles abruptly back into its sheath, having never been drawn out more than an inch; Byakuya's head hangs between his sloping shoulders, rain still dripping from the tip of his nose.

He disappears into the monsoon. If the others ask when they reconvene, he will tell them that he was caught in the rain and unable to reach Captain Kuchiki.

It is not entirely a lie.

* * *

**Thanks for the read everybody! Next chapter coming up soon. **


	3. Late Summer: Heat Wave

**Hello folks! Back with part three. I originally thought this would be split up into four chapters corresponding to the seasons, but I didn't want to dump huge mega-chapters on you, so I guess it'll be split up into smaller parts. So it goes! I'd like to thank you all again for reading this odd little fic, and stick with my tradition of returning reviews!**

**honeyMellon: I'm glad you're still enjoying! Hopefully this chapter is good as well.**

**bre 42: Thanks for the read! Here's your update. :)**

**sardonicis imperfecta: Many thanks for your in-depth review. I like your way of looking at these characters as contrasting rather than 'perfect' opposites - and I agree. Part of my motivation for writing this (admittedly weird!) fic was to flesh out the similarities between them, which has proven to be a bigger challenge than finding the differences. I hope you enjoy this chapter as well.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach.**

**Warnings: violence, vague naughtiness, dub-con, anal. **

* * *

Secretly, at night

A worm under the moon

Bores into a chestnut.

_Basho_

Byakuya is beset by troubling dreams. A fever has tormented him since the first day of the monsoon season. He awakes throughout the night and day unsure of his surroundings, sometimes asking after his wife, other times crying out for his father.

The days are long, still and hot. A shimmer of heat hovers on the horizon and ripples in the air. At dusk the shadows are long and black and the bullfrogs growl a chorus in the withered reeds. Around the banks of the garden pond the water has receded, leaving a line of marshy bank that bakes in the sun and moistens again with the dew.

Sweat soaks Byakuya's bedclothes though he lays naked beneath them. His thick black hair is swept back and knotted at the nape of his neck, but free strands cling to his temples and forehead. His eyes, once sharp and alert, are hollow and ringed with sallow skin, tender from agitation. A servant asks permission to lift his head so that he may drink ginger tea, and he allows it.

Outside of his bedroom, Ginrei fixes a servant with his cool, level stare.

"Is it the wasting sickness that took the woman?" he asks.

"With submission sir," answers the servant, "there isn't any way to know. Kuchiki-sama has not permitted Unohana-taichou to visit."

Ginrei sees the wisdom in Byakuya's decision, delirious though he is. It would be neither couth nor canny for a woman to tend to his grandson in this state, naked, sweat-soaked and muttering the ghastly content of his nightmares.

"Send for Seinousuke Yamada," he commands evenly, with perfect conviction. "If he need come tomorrow or the next day, let it be so. But no later."

Again he peers into the darkened room where Byakuya now writhes and gasps, twisted in his damp sheets.

"No later than that, do you understand?" Ginrei repeats.

But the servant is already gone.

* * *

A long, gated courtyard is used for the decisive sparring rounds. It is lined with sand and fine gravel for traction; the walls are high and austere. There is enough space for a handful of captains to observe the rounds before and after their participation, though the attendance of all captains is not required.

Gin arrives early to inspect the terrain. He is pleased that the arena is open to the vastness of the blazing sky; shinsou is not a weapon for use indoors.

"Aizen-taichou," he greets over his shoulder. This reiatsu he would recognize anywhere.

"Good morning, Gin," Aizen smiles graciously, pleased that his subordinate has finally managed to arrive somewhere on time. His attempts at discipline, he thinks, must be paying off.

"Who'll I be fighting?" Gin strides near with his hands tucked into his sleeves.

"Kenpachi-taichou, Ukitake-taichou, Kyoraku-Taichou and Komamura-taichou."

"How sad," Gin laments, "Kuchiki-sama couldn't come."

"Let us all hope he is well again soon," Aizen agrees, and from behind him come voices of assent.

"He'll pull through any day now," Kenpachi declares, "Botchan's* too stubborn to up and drop dead."

Ukitake laughs good-naturedly and joins the growing gathering of them. A few captains and vice-captains seem to have come only to watch the proceedings.

"We should all send our regards to Byakuya-sama," Ukitake smiles, "it's a terrible thing to be ill in weather like this."

Kenpachi grunts and Aizen takes on a look of smooth, genial concern. Gin's hand rests on the hilt of his sword.

"Well then," says Kyoraku after each combatant has arrived, "best get started."

* * *

Seinousuke Yamada has never been inside a noble estate before. He is intrigued with that thought alone, but the fact that he was personally invited arouses his imagination. There are no more women in the house, he hears, which is dismaying, but to him the Kuchiki men have always been as pretty and graceful in their youth as any women.

A servant shows him inside.

"Welcome," he says, "we have been waiting for you."

Seinosuke gives a soft laugh.

"I hope I'm not late," he sighs, falling into step behind the servant, "it's hard to get anywhere fast in this heat."

Byakuya's room is a spacious, windowless chamber in the center of the house. It is suitably austere with firm tatami and a lacquered screen in one corner and an unlit brass brazier in the other. The servants have kept it dark due to the sensitivity of his eyes; the air is moist and thickly scented with the oppressive odors of sickness.

It reminds Seinouske of the dens animals go into to die.

Seinosuke places his bag of supplies on the floor near Byakuya's bed. The servant who led him inside wrings his hands for a moment as he looks anxiously at the face of his master.

"Shall I bring anything?" he whispers. Seinosuke nods.

"A basin of cool water and cloth," he lists. He reaches out and lays his palm across Byakuya's forehead, drawing it back promptly. The captain's fever is scorching.

"Yes, Yamada-fukutaichou," the servant breathes, and then disappears.

Seinosuke laments that there are no windows to open in order to disperse the miasma of illness. By the gloss clinging to his skin and the stains marking his bedclothes, he surmises that Byakuya must have passed through fits and jolts of fever and chills for days.

The servants laid a thin sheet over his body on account of the visitor, but Seinosuke takes it by the seam and tugs it away. Underneath, the naked body of Byakuya Kuchiki is breathtaking despite his condition. His limbs are long and well-formed, and though he has been for some time languishing, toned with youthful muscle. He is, like his father before him, conspicuously narrow-shouldered and long-necked, but his jaw is strong and his penis lays thick but limp against his thigh.

"Are you with me, Kuchiki-taichou?" Seinosuke hums. He smiles in the darkness. A groan of no particular meaning is his reply.

Seinosuke's fingers are long, pale and dexterous. They come to rest just under Byakuya's jaw, where they press slightly in search of swollen glands. The young master's breathing hitches as the touch migrates downward, skimming the length of his struggling throat and fanning out to cross his chest. Here Byakuya is hard and muscular, though his dusky nipples are satin-smooth under Seinosuke's fingertips.

He can feel the nobleman's heart beat at a fluttering pace. The ridges of his ribs rise and fall with his labored breathing.

Seinosuke is startled when the door opens again, though his hands remain on Byakuya's stomach. It would look too suspicious, he thinks, to draw so suddenly away.

The same servant places a basin of cool water dotted with ice chips at his side, adding a stack of clean linen cloths before bowing and excusing himself again. Seinosuke immediately submerges some of the cloths in the water, then leans down to slide his arm beneath Byakuya's shoulders.

"Come," he speaks low into the master's ear, "sit up, lean on me."

* * *

By the time Gin enters his second bout, Kenpachi will not stop praising him.

Kyoraku will not stop calling him _young. _

Ukitake is seated against one of the walls with his hair tied at the nape of his neck. He made it through his bout unscathed, though Gin sustained no wounds either. It was an exercise in speed and dodging, which Aizen is mostly pleased with. It very clearly winded Ukitake, who by the end seemed baffled by his apparent inability to land even a single hit. Gin seemed surprised that it was already over.

The tip of Komamura's sword catches the belt of Gin's kosode and he hollows out, escapes the blade, and the swath of black cloth flutters to the sand. Sweat shines on Gin's pale body in the brilliant sunlight, and when he turns to block a second strike it slings from his hair in a spray of droplets.

Aizen watches him intently. Gin looks ethereal, lethal. The sun on his body illuminates every sharp angle, every jutting bone; he could as easily be a hungry ghost as a living creature. He moves so gracefully that it seems the light could at any moment pass right through him and absolve him of his shadow.

When he lands in the sand the impact ripples through every muscle. Shinsou retracts in a hail of blood. Komamura signals that he is not badly wounded, but surrenders the bout nonetheless. Gin wipes his blade on his hakama and rolls his shoulders.

"My turn?" Kenpachi asks, grinning wildly.

"It seems so," Aizen agrees.

Gin's shadow stretches from his feet to the opposite end of the courtyard. He takes note of Kyoraku's focus on it, however fleeting, and his smile never falters. As Kenpachi approaches, Gin chides himself for ever having thought that any of this would be challenging.

* * *

_The room I've been laying in is a dream of this room._

The thought comes to Byakuya in shades and suggestions.

_The man who was with me is a dream of this man._

Seinosuke smiles when Byakuya's eyes at last flutter open. He is wringing out a white cloth into a basin of slightly clouded water.

"Good afternoon, Kuchiki-taichou," he greets.

"Seinosuke Yamada," Byakuya mutters. An attempt to sit up ends in a sputtering gasp.

"Your fever has broken, sir," the medic explains, "but it is advisable that you rest. When you feel able, eating is advisable as well."

Byakuya has no notion of how long he has lain submerged in delirious fever dreams. He cannot tell the time of day apart from Seinousuke's remark that it is afternoon. When he searches his mind for his most recent memories, he summons images of some pale figure dressed as a shinigami, stalking through his garden like a ghost.

This, he decides, must be one of the dreams. He has suffered through hundreds of them for days: his father's voice has spoken to him from a glass jar of squirming beetles; his brazier has glowed white-hot in the dead of winter, then blue, green; his bonsai has sprouted blossoms with red wasps in their centers; Hisana has crossed through the room over and over again.

Of all the dreams, the last was the worst.

"I believe I can eat," Byakuya says at length, licking his cracked lips. Seinosuke nods, rises, whispers with a servant at the door.

"Tea, porridge and umeboshi," he says.

It all sounds as good as anything to Byakuya. He desires no one thing more than any other at the moment, though he has decided that he must not drink again lest he sink into delirium once more.

* * *

The bout is not immediately over when Gin separates Kyoraku's sword from his palm with a clever glancing strike only because Kyoraku uses two swords. Still a collective gasp goes up from the spectators when the blade hits the sand. Kyoraku himself seems, for a moment, stunned. Then he grins.

"You're really something else altogether, Ichimaru!" he shouts, and then, sheathing his remaining sword, throws his hands up and turns to the others.

"I think that's about enough, eh?" he declares, "Who here hasn't seen enough?"

Kenpachi, bloodied, laughs boldly and offers to spar again any time. Gin stays rooted to his spot, wiping foreign blood out of his eyes with only a little irritation. The day has been long and he is sunburnt and aching, but thrills of energy course through him nonetheless. From the very glint of Aizen's glasses he knows he has succeeded in his task.

"Come on over," Kyoraku calls, and Gin obeys without hesitation. When he is near enough the older captain pats him jovially on the back.

"You've put on quite a show," he congratulates, and then, to the others: "you know, this is why I need a younger vice-captain!" Genial laughter follows from the gathered crowd.

"Who's _not _younger than you, anyhow?" Ukitake ribs. He takes Kyoraku's hands and rises to his feet.

"We will discuss what we've seen," he explains to Gin, "and a formal decision will be given at the next scheduled captains' meeting. But I don't think you have anything to worry about." He winks. Gin looks at him and then at Aizen.

"You are dismissed, Gin," Aizen says. "Get some rest."

Gin searches his face for some trace of emotion and does not find it. He is addled by the sun and the exertion. Drying blood begins to sting and itch on his naked torso. Picking at flakes of it, he turns toward the gates of the courtyard and walks through them.

When he reaches the road he begins to sprint. He can think of nothing clearly but being home, in the shade, with his bucket of water and washcloth, with his pillow and blanket, with the paper sack of dried persimmon Rangiku brought him when she last visited the market.

His home is little more than a single room shack at the end of a long dirt road edged with weeds. Aizen installed him here when he was merely a low-seated officer fresh out of academy. Even as a child, he knew how to live on his own.

Gin bursts through the door and slams it shut behind him, panting and dripping with sweat. He leans heavily against the cool wood panel of the wall, raking his hands over his face to wipe away the perspiration. It clings to his lashes and eyebrows and stings in every cut, every abrasion. He licks it away from his lips. Breathing burns and every muscle trembles under its own weight.

Alone in the dark, Gin begins to laugh.

* * *

"It is good to see you well again," Ginrei remarks evenly. His relief is partly due to Byakuya's renewed ability to feed himself.

"Did anything important transpire while I was ill?" Byakuya asks, folding his hands in his lap. He is now dressed in a clean white yukata with his hair rinsed and loosely tied.

"Aizen-taichou has nominated a new vice-captain, a Gin Ichimaru. Today was his combat examination, though I've heard nothing yet of the outcome."

Dark brows knit together as the captain considers this news. He is sure that he heard a whisper of it someplace before, though he cannot remember where. The past months stretch behind him blurry and black, consumed in shadow. Only Hisana's death remains clear in his mind.

"Let us hope the new vice-captain is worthy," he says with some ritual finality. Ginrei grunts in assent.

"It is Obon soon," he notes after a moment, rising to stand. Byakuya watches him with muted interest.

"I should order lilies for her," he thinks aloud. Ginrei nods as he slides the door open, and over his shoulder says:

"You should."

* * *

At first Gin cannot distinguish the sound of Aizen's approaching footsteps from the blood pounding in his temples. It is only when his door opens, very softly, and then closes, very softly, that he knows Aizen has arrived. Gin lifts his eyelids to watch the other come near. Underneath the door, a thin line of richly golden light suggests that it must be nearing sunset.

"You were approved unanimously," Aizen announces evenly.

Gin exhales deeply. Aizen grasps his narrow shoulder and forces him to turn, pressing his cheek against the wall.

"You did very well, Gin," he goes on. As he speaks, he loosens the threads of Gin's hakama and lets them fall to the floor. There is a still moment, and then Gin feels wet fingers probe between his thighs.

"I am very pleased with you," he says. His voice, octaves deeper than Gin's, resonates in the slighter man's core. Gin lets his eyes fall shut again.

Gin gives a quiet groan when he is penetrated. Both of Aizen's slick fingers move inside of him, forcing open tightly drawn muscles. His nerves buzz and confuse him. He lacks the resolve to stay silent, which he supposes Aizen must have anticipated.

"Ichimaru-fukutaichou," Aizen breathes in his ear, "I like the sound of that."

The first thrust lifts him onto the balls of his feet. He lets out a strangled cry and breathes heavily as his fingers scramble for purchase against the wall. Aizen holds his hips steady and pounds into his yielding body relentlessly.

Gin's fingernails tear grooves in the wood of his wall though he is not trying to escape. Though he is exhausted and wrought with pain, and though his breathing comes in shudders intermixed with moans, he is aware of the futility of escape.

He comes hard and immediately feels lightheaded, faint, dizzy. His stomach is growling even as his semen drips heavily from the tip of his sex. The feeling reminds him bitterly of old times: Aizen has a way, he muses vaguely, of taking him back to the past.

_And that is how life is,_ Gin thinks, _always going over the same bridges over and over again._

* * *

**Notes to _Late Summer _**

*Oddly enough, Seinousuke Yamada is a real Bleach character, and yes, Hanatarou Yamada's older brother. He really was Unohana's vice captain some time ago. Little is known about him other than that he had a 'bad character' and looked a bit unwholesome.

*_Botchan _or _Bocchan_ is defined as "a green young man from a well-to-do family." I'm not sure of a strong English equivalent. What Kenpachi is getting at here (rather facetiously) is Byakuya's youth, wealth and impetuousness.

*_Umeboshi_ are a little like pickled plums, and have a very pungent, salty-sour taste. They're eaten as snacks but also treated as folk remedies for colds and the flu.

*_Obon _or _Bon _is a Japanese Buddhist holiday season that incorporates a lot of Shinto towns or provinces hold festivals with fireworks and dancing, and families come together to tend the graves of ancestors. Some parts of Japan celebrate Obon around July 15th, but more commonly it's celebrated around August 15th, which is around the point this chapter takes place.

**Thanks a million for the read! Let me know your thoughts! **


	4. Early Autumn: Mist

**Hello folks! Back here with the fourth chapter! I am frankly pretty surprised that you are all still reading along, but what a happy surprise it is! I know this fic is longer than most of mine; hopefully I will be wrapping it up soon.**

**lye tea: I'm glad you're enjoying it! I'm interested to see what you think as these characters continue to develop psychologically in this chapter and coming chapters.  
**

**bre 42: I'm sorry last chapter didn't jive with you! :( I intended the scene with Gin and Aizen to be ambiguous in terms of consent, as their arrangement seems deeply steeped in coercion and evasion to me. I hope this chapter works out better in terms of clarity.  
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**honeyMellon: In this chapter, the creepy torch is passed from Aizen to Gin. I've always thought they had certain creepy qualities in common. I hope you like it!  
**

**sardonicis imperfecta: I'm so glad that the oppressive, desperate vibe came through for you. Your readings are very acute and I'm sincerely grateful to have you as a reader. I hope this chapter comes off as strong as the last, though it is very different in tone.  
**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach.  
**

**Warnings: Prostitution, fondling, noncon contemplation.  
**

* * *

On a misty day

Even the Gods

Must feel aimless.

_Kobayashi Issa_

Now the persimmons hang heavy and coral-gold from their branches. Gin can watch them transfixed for hours from his office window. Every time he tries to put brush to paper his eyes are drawn as if by sorcery to the vibrant yellow of the failing leaves and the slowly ripening fruits as they weigh down the drooping branches day by day.

He stalks them like prey.

He closes his doors, opens his window and daydreams with his feet on his desk.

He thinks of how his teeth will feel cutting through the flesh of the first fruit of the season.

The whole fifth division turned out to see him move his 'things' into his new office. There were whispers and subtle gasps: aside from a spare haori and wastebasket for his plum pits, he brought nothing at all. The former vice-captain had left a few personal belongings behind, which Gin fondles and investigates with great relish, like a coroner performing an autopsy. They are the remnants and the wreckage of a life he ended, collateral damage left in the wake of his progress.

_She was so weak._

Gin twists a dried petal from a pressed poppy he found lining the uppermost drawer of the desk.

He has a terrible habit of tearing things apart.

* * *

Obon came and went in a blur of bonfires and floating lanterns all aglow and felt, in its own ritualistic and final way, like an anniversary. It was not, of course, the first rehearsal of the date of her death, but it was the first public occasion on which Byakuya was forced to regard her as _dead. _Ginrei feels it was a step in the right direction.

Byakuya offers him tea as he comes in from the mist.

"Of course," Ginrei accepts gratefully, shrugging off the damp cold. The mornings have grown progressively foggy and are now scented with moist leaves.

"I'm glad you've stopped by," Byakuya says as he leads his grandfather to the parlor. Implicit in the statement is a question: _why are you here? _It is impertinent, but then, Byakuya has always been impertinent, and on some level Ginrei is happy to see him sharp and alert again, even if it has come with his impetuousness in tow.

"How are you feeling?" he asks.

"Fine," Byakuya answers curtly. He has returned to his formal duties, and now wears his tekkou, kenseikan and captain's haori as if he never went without. The manor now smells subtly of green tea and pine, the olfactory memory of illness having been banished like an unwelcome guest. Byakuya sits squarely across from Ginrei and folds his hands in his lap as a servant pours steaming tea.

"I've been wondering," Ginrei begins between sips, "if you've thought of the future of the family."

"Of remarrying, you mean," Byakuya says. His gaze is level and unflinching.

Ginrei pauses and turns his cup in his hand. On his skin he can see liver spots on skin now faintly translucent, reminders that he no longer has the power over his grandson that he used to.

"It may very well mean remarrying," Ginrei says. At times like these he speaks of duty, of obligation: these things maintain control over Byakuya where he cannot anymore.

"Do you have anyone in mind?" Byakuya speaks quickly but then stops himself before he grows openly hostile. He drinks deeply of his tea. A slew of names flicker through his mind: he is tempted to offer up the most sterile and asexual women he can imagine, just the sort his grandfather had always found _suitable. _

Beneath his cool impassivity, Ginrei's fury builds.

"It is not important whether or not I can think of an appropriate match," he grinds out, "but only that _you _can, Byakuya."

"I will think on it." Byakuya puts an end to the matter by standing. "If you will forgive me, grandfather, work accumulated quickly while I was ill. I must see to it."

A servant enters immediately to remove the serving ware and show the two of them out. Ginrei stands slowly, begrudging his creaking joints. He has no choice but to accept the hand that is offered to him.

* * *

Even at noon the day is exceptionally crisp. Groves of birch are now so many streaks of white with flashes of yellow edged in black. Between their slender trunks are glimpses of ochre and scarlet. Only the pines remain full and thick, and their scent is strong in the air. Gin thinks it a pity to be indoors on a day like this, when the cool air stealing beneath his kosode makes him feel carnal and alive.

"Must be exciting, bein' around all these young kids," Gin remarks as they approach the academy. Aizen agrees with a nostalgic sigh.

"Their passion for calligraphy inspires me," he confesses.

They part at the door to Aizen's lecture hall. Gin knows, as he watches his captain's retreating back, that there was something he had meant to ask him, but the thought vanished somewhere between the fifth division and the spot where he stands. Students pass by him in red and blue hakama, offering bows and awed, murmured greetings. Paper rustles, satchels are unbuckled.

Gin gazes vaguely down into the auditorium as students take their seats. Aizen is talking with a blue-eyed blond first-year who is, from the looks of him, genuine and bright.

A cold breeze drifts in, scattering paper from one desk to the next, and Gin cannot remember the slightest notion of what it was he meant to ask.

* * *

"Ah, Ukitake-taichou," Byakuya looks up and acknowledges his colleague with a nod. Though he is expressionless, Byakuya is taken by some surprise: when he heard the other man's voice, he thought it had been a long while since he had seen him last. But now that he looks into his face, he recovers memories far more recent, though he cannot exactly place them.

Ukitake beams down at him, framed by the open doors of the sixth-division captain's office.

"I hope I'm not interrupting," the other captain rasps. Byakuya is immediately, though not visibly alarmed. He methodically puts his writing instruments away and rises to his feet, joining Ukitake.

"I was just finishing for the day," he assures him.

"If it's alright, I thought I'd walk you to the captains' meeting and catch up a little," Ukitake offers with a shy smile. When Byakuya joins him, he finds that the corners of the man's lips are cracked and raw. Out of courtesy he does not mention it.

"How have you been lately?" he asks instead.

"I never fare well in the cooler weather," Ukitake replies, though he tempers the gravity of his condition with a light-hearted laugh. "Still, it's a lovely season."

It is. The long avenue leading away from the sixth division is edged by brilliant foliage; the ground beneath is scattered with trampled leaves. A sweet, earthy scent hints at the coming of harvest. Though it is only late afternoon, the sun has already begun its descent, and the rays that spill through the falling leaves are bronze and burnished gold.

"And how have _you_ been, Byakuya-sama?" Ukitake asks after a long moment. He watches his companion from the corner of his eye. As always, Byakuya is impressed with his tact.

"As well as can be expected." It is an understood aspect of Byakuya's deeply felt noblesse oblige to refuse to admit to weakness, but under such circumstances, words and phrases take on a sort of hieroglyphic meaning, and this answer is the closest he can rightly come to voicing his own pain. And he knows, with one glance to his left, that Ukitake, who is perhaps Sereitei's very own lord and master of silent distress, understands.

"If I may," Ukitake begins softly, tucking his hands into his sleeves, and as Byakuya does not interrupt he supposes that he indeed may, "everyone must go alone to the place you're at now, Byakuya-sama. But please do not think that you are without friends. And if at any time you should like to visit, I should be very glad to receive you."

Byakuya feels for the first time unmoored, as if he has finally glimpsed the distant shore from sea, giving him some idea of how lost he really is. His throat tightens and he looks instinctively upward into the trees. Leaves flutter downward in showers of swirling amber.

"Thank you, Ukitake," he says when he trusts his voice again.

They have arrived at the assembly hall, where a few others are gathered inside, and some are yet to come. Ukitake turns to face Byakuya head-on, giving a tender, searching smile. Warmth glows in his dark eyes. Byakuya tries not to let it remind him of her.

"I mean it, Byakuya," Ukitake says earnestly, "Any time you'd like to visit."

They part and climb the steps into the soft, cozy light of the assembly hall. Kyoraku greets Ukitake immediately, offering a half-winking bow to Byakuya as well. They drift off together speaking in quiet tones. A strange electricity sparkles among the gathered captains, and Byakuya cannot discern whether it is related to the evening's business or the chill of autumn.

Aizen arrives with his new vice-captain to general murmurs of approval and light applause.

"Ha-ha! Man of the hour," Kenpachi booms, slapping a hand on the slight man's shoulder. Gin's smile does not falter.

Again Byakuya is overcome with the strange sensation of having seen this man before, though he cannot think of where. He stills in place and stares for long moments at that strange face, pale and faintly boyish, with a wide mouth and narrow eyes never congruent with the ever-present smile.

_Did he try out for the sixth?_

Gin's voice is light and mocking. He is reliving, at Kenpachi's insistence, their bout during his examination. All at once he notices that Byakuya is gazing directly into his face, and his eyes open very slightly, and they are ghastly blue and piercing.

Byakuya abruptly looks away as the ceremony begins.

* * *

After his official induction as a vice-captain, Gin is entitled to several weeks' back pay for work completed while not yet wearing the badge. As soon as his check is delivered to him, his first thought is to set out for a brothel.

As a general rule, Gin likes whores. For as long as he can remember, he has liked whores. As a young boy they were the only women who didn't seem to think of him as beneath them. They would give him loose change for rubbing their feet, and often gifted him with pears and apples when customers without means paid in produce.

He remembers how Rangiku would come home early in the morning smelling cloyingly sweet and smoky, always with a purse full of coins. On her income, sporadic as it was, they could eat for days. Gin always swore, as he drew her body close to his and felt the sticky residue of sex on her skin, that he would pay her back some day.

And he largely has. As a seated officer, nearly every cent of his salary went directly to Rangiku, in the form of tuition, rent, clothing or sake. She chose to interpret it all as lovers' gifts, and Gin never corrected her. He understands the need to forget certain parts of the past.

But he will never forget the way to the _Red Rooster, _where the girls are a little older but a little kinder, and without much exception in good health. Gin never feels rushed here, which he greatly appreciates: for someone whose sword extends infinitely on command, Gin hates fucking in a pinch.

He lingers outside the doors in the autumn evening, counting his money under the swaying light of the red lanterns. Tonight, he thinks, he may have enough for an hour with a boy and a girl, if he remembers their rates correctly, and he's sure he does –

There is a commotion from behind the lacquered screen just indoors. Gin moves instinctively to the side and glances in, his hand on the hilt of his sword. A flurry of female voices gives way to a few sharp peals of laughter, and then scrambling, stuttering apologies. Out into the night comes a young blonde man, trembling with anxiety. Gin recognizes him at once.

_Aizen was talking with a blue-eyed blond first-year who is, from the looks of him, genuine and bright._

"Evenin'," Gin greets. The boy looks terror-stricken. Sweat beads on his forehead.

"Ichimaru-fukutaichou," he stammers, stepping back.

"Am I famous already?" Gin laughs, "How 'bout that!" He figures that discussion of his promotion has already swept through the academy. Gossip was always plentiful when he was there, though his tenure was short.

The blond does not say anything. His eyes grow impossibly wide.

"What's th' matter?" Gin grins, stepping closer; the other retreats a step on instinct. "You look like somebody just walked over your grave, _kouhai_-kun."

"I didn't – mean to be here – sir," the boy pleads haltingly, his eyes darting from Gin to the threshold of the brothel, where two matronly women have appeared to close the doors. The light that had spilled from within narrows to a slit and then disappears, leaving only the foreboding red light of the lanterns.

"Well," Gin hums, "I won't tell if you won't tell, kouhai-kun." His long fingers find the boy's shoulder and he draws him near in a mock-fraternal embrace, leading him down the alley adjacent to the brothel.

He can feel the nervousness brittle and tight in the boy's shoulders.

"I – I'm sorry," he stutters, "M-my friends brought me here for a celebration. I, ah, I couldn't go through with it."

Gin scarcely listens as he guides the hapless blond toward a bar. Drunken patrons loiter around the door and make lewd comments as the two of them enter; the boy tenses, shudders. Gin deposits him at a low table and sits across from him to appraise him better.

At this proximity he can smell him, and the scent is telling: clean, fresh, herbal. Gin supposes that he must wash well and often, and that he must've been brought up doing so. His hair appears soft and conservatively cut, and as Gin peers into the wide blue eyes he decides that this boy must be a very good son.

"Remind me of your name," Gin opens, following a waitress with his eyes. When she drops by, he orders two bottles of sake. The boy traces the grain of the wood in the table with his fingertips, avoiding his companion's gaze.

"Kira Izuru," he says softly. His voice is tinged with the last hint of adolescent cracking. Gin watches his adam's apple bob as he swallows and sweats.

"Kira Izuru," Gin repeats, reclining to let the waitress settle down their drinks, "that's right. I remember now." She pours a sloppy cup for each and leaves the bottles. By Kira's flinching, Gin figures that he is not exactly accustomed to such low class establishments.

"D-did Aizen-taichou mention my name?" Kira asks, shifting in place.

"Course he did," Gin lies seamlessly and watches Kira drink. His wrist is slender, refined. He arches it elegantly to pour a second cup of sake. Gin surmises that it is soothing to his nerves, a weakness he will never put out of his mind.

"I hope that he wasn't displeased with me," he mutters into his cup. In his voice there is a defeated quality that suggests he expects Aizen's displeasure now, given the state of things.

"He's real impressed," Gin assures him, "says you're a talented kid. Bet he'd never believe it if I told him where I found you tonight."

"Please," Kira half-leans across the table, flattening one hand on it in earnest emphasis, "Please, Ichimaru-fukutaichou, do not mention this to Aizen-taichou. It – I can explain, why –"

"Relax," Gin laughs, reaching across the table to ruffle the boy's hair; it is every silken bit as soft as he assumed it would be. "I'm not gonna tell. I just didn't wanna see you gettin' mixed up in nasty business in such a bad part of town."

Kira flushes bright pink from the tip of his nose to the tops of his ears.

"Oh, thank you," he breathes, venturing a wilting smile. He fidgets a little more, drinks another half-cup of sake, and then adds: "I don't come here often. Well, I've never been here before, but to the Rukongai, I mean. Not often."

"Kira-kun comes from a good family, ne?" Gin presses, and he is, of course, correct. As Kira continues to drink he continues to talk, and to his growing wonder the vice-captain finds that the boy really is every bit the sweet, genuine young man he appears to be.

After the two bottles are empty, Gin stands and extends a hand to Kira, who accepts it without question and sways precariously on his feet. He chuckles and asks Gin's pardon.

"I'll walk ya home," Gin cheerfully volunteers, again slinging a long arm over the boy's shoulders.

"Thank you so much, Ichimaru-fukutaichou," he mumbles. The pink stain on his cheeks now seems permanent.

A bright orange moon outshines every star in the autumn sky. The roofs of the Rukongai seem preternaturally peaceful beneath it, even with their sloping, sagging awnings and missing shingles. Gin's breath turns to frost in the air as he guides Kira back toward the academy dorms.

In the small sudden movements of Kira's shivering, Gin can feel the depth of his fragility, though whether its origin is physical or emotional he cannot discern just yet. Kira seems frail and frangible to his very core.

He is stumbling now, tripping over his own feet and slipping on the slick fallen leaves carpeting the short path from the dormitory gates to the door of his building. An arm steadies him at the waist, and when he turns instinctually to duck out of the grasp, Gin simply pulls him closer.

"What's the hurry?" he breathes hotly into Kira's ear. The blond shrinks away, his back flattening against the outer wall of his dormitory hall. It is no colder or harder than Gin's body imposing against him.

"There's a curfew," Kira murmurs, though he thinks that it will not matter.

And Gin knows that he can have, here against this cold white wall, precisely what he set out to get tonight. And though Gin hates to fuck in a pinch he has and he can and he will again. Maybe the boy will struggle and maybe he will not. He is frightened of reproach, half-drunk and stricken with Gin's rumored genius and nascent fame.

Gin decides to do what Aizen has never been able to do.

"Best get inside, then," he hisses, and releases Kira, who turns and fumbles with the latch of a window. When the latch finally gives he lifts the casement and scrambles inside, breathing hard and flailing as he emerges on the other side. When he clambers back to his feet and whips around to glance again at Gin, the man's back is cast in black silhouette against the broad gold moon.

"Thank you," Kira whispers after him, and closes the window. His face disappears in the darkness of his room.

Ichimaru Gin is speechless.

* * *

**Notes to _Early Autumn: Ripen_**

"_You look like somebody just walked over your grave" _is a term I grew up with in the deep American south. It is used to suggest that somebody looks pale or inexplicably afraid. I do not mean to suggest that it is a phrase that is widely used in Japan, as Japanese funeral customs usually dictate cremation and interment rather than the burial of corpses in underground family plots. I used it for Gin here to evoke his tendency to speak in off-puttingly familiar, colloquial terms. To me, this phrase will always be among the most subtly menacing and eerie in my vocabulary.

_Kouhai _is a term referring to an underclassman or junior. Though the term arises from school settings, it is also used in work settings. In this situation, however, Gin is invoking Kira's status as a younger student.

**That's all for now! I hope you enjoyed. Thanks for reading, and please review!**


	5. Late Autumn: Harvest

**Back with more! I'm so glad to have this chapter to you right at the unofficial end of summer - I hope you enjoy it! As always, I'm thrilled that folks are following this fic!**

**wikedsinn: Thanks so much for the read! I hope this chapter keeps your interest.  
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**sardonicis imperfecta: Ah, such an amazingly in-depth review! Many thanks! I do linger a lot on the theme of scent, because it's so linked with memory. Last chapter was all about forgetting (or pretending to forget!) while this one is all about remembering. I hope you enjoy!  
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**lye tea: I agree with your thoughts on Gin. His psychology is so intriguing to me. I hope I do him justice here, along with Aizen, who seems also to me to be a more understandable kind of evil. Thanks so much for the read and the review!  
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**Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach.  
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**Warnings: heavy petting, implied sex.  
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* * *

A bright moon

Walking home alone

Frightened by howling foxes._  
_

_Basho_

Byakuya wakes before dawn with words in his mind.

_Byakuya-sama will be the most excellent father._

_Two sons and two daughters, I think that would be perfect._

He sits up in bed and rakes his fingers through his hair. When his blankets pool around his naked waist he realizes that he has not yet changed his thin summer bedclothes for warmer winter versions. Gooseflesh rises along his arms and shoulders.

It is hard now for him to believe that his greatest concern at this time last year was their childlessness. After four years of marriage it had been difficult to justify. Whispers had gone around suggesting that she was frigid or he was impotent or both; none of it had been, to Byakuya's knowledge, remotely true. They had tried earnestly, but in retrospect he finds that her health had always been fragile and irregular.

Though his room is at the center of the manor the wood floor is cold from the late autumn chill. All night servants steal in to stoke the low brass brazier now filled with glowing coals, but Byakuya realizes now with bland conviction that another will have to be added.

She used to say that she would be overjoyed with a son or a daughter so long as the child were healthy. Byakuya had agreed at the time but in privacy wished for a son. When he would lay with her in the early mornings he would talk to her about names, and he knew, even then, that her failure to conceive weighed her down.

Byakuya stands and draws a heavy kimono over his shoulders. It will not do to begin weeping again before the day begins. It seems his eyes have felt tender and raw for months now, and each time he succumbs to one of these spells, he reawakens the grainy, stinging feeling fresh in his mind.

The warm winter linens are stored in a closet down the corridor. Byakuya's feet are soundless on the stretch of smoothly polished, cool wood floor. A shiver runs through him as he turns a dark corner and expects – something.

But there is nothing.

He finds his way to the closet and opens its door, stilling for a moment to allow his vision to adjust to the semi-darkness. A far window admits a few slanting rays of wan moonlight that illuminate strips of fabric: towels, sheets, and tucked neatly into the corner of a shelf, a jade comb couched in the folds of a delicately embroidered blanket.

Byakuya's jaw falls slack and then clenches; he turns sharply away and restrains himself from slamming the closet door by standing rigid and still, fists tightly balled. He has been caught thoroughly off-guard, having not laid eyes on these possessions of hers since the day of the funeral.

Without a sound Byakuya sinks to his knees and gathers the blanket into his hands, smoothing his fingers over the needlework Hisana worked so painstakingly on. This little act of creation was her substitute for conception, a material representation of her nervous waiting.

Byakuya buries his mouth and nose in the cloth and breathes in until he is shuddering and dizzy. All of his effort not to weep is now wasted. He heaves, spent and bitter, on his knees in the corridor, inhaling Hisana's scent with every breath.

A little while before she fell ill, he found her praying fervently that her blood would not come in the next month, and though he comforted her, he prayed for it too.

_Whoever has the authority to answer prayers has a cruel sense of humor. _

* * *

For a moment she thinks she has daydreamed it, but then she hears it again.

"Oi, Rangiku-chan!"

She whirls around in a flurry of disturbed leaves. Gin is obscured in the pale branches of the persimmon tree with a basket over his forearm. At once she smiles broadly.

"Don't you have a job to do?" she laughs. He waves her near.

"Need to get 'em in now if I want 'em dry by winter," he explains, reaching high above her head to pluck a ripe fruit from its stem. He deposits it into his basket and sinks his fingers briefly into her hair.

"They should be paying you enough to buy them from the market," she smiles.

"Too sweet," he counters, "if you really want 'em sour, you gotta dry 'em yourself."

Rangiku lifts the basket from his forearm and stands near him as he harvests the fruit.

"Are you watching tonight?" she asks after a moment. Gin glances back at her over his shoulder.

"Watchin' what?"

"The eclipse," she explains, grinning. "They must keep you pretty busy if you haven't heard."

"Aa. Too busy if you ask me."

A cool breeze lifts the last of the leaves from the pale branches of the persimmon tree, and Gin snaps the last fruit from its weak stem.

"Will you watch it with me?" she implores. Her eyes are wide and perfectly blue. Gin drops the ripe persimmon into the basket and lays his hands over hers on the handle.

"Don't see why not," he says. When he speaks he closes an inch or two of imperceptible distance between them that nonetheless changes the pitch of the exchange. Rangiku flushes lightly.

"Meet you at your place?" she ventures. Even when she is playful, she is never coy. Gin brushes a strand of hair away from her forehead and presses his lips to the cleared space.

"Sundown," he agrees. She returns his basket to him and breathes for a moment the scent she will always want to remember in association with him: autumn air, ripe persimmons, the earthy salt of his skin. Gin kisses her briefly on the lips and waves as she returns to her errand, heart still pounding.

Inside the fifth division headquarters, Gin settles the basket down on his desk and begins spearing the fruits on the long wooden skewers used for drying them. He is aware of Aizen's presence behind him, though he does not make any effort to regard him.

"A good harvest this year, Gin?" Aizen asks.

Gin shrugs noncommittally.

"You must realize," Aizen goes on smoothly, "that the closer you are to her, the more danger she is in. Only a word of caution."

Gin says nothing. The tip of a skewer bursts through the center of the fruit between his fingers, and he thinks: _shoot to kill._

* * *

"I'm so glad you asked," Shunsui is saying. One of his hands is on Byakuya's shoulder and the other is on the hilt of his rough-hewn bokken. "It's been a month of Sundays since I had a good sparring match with a young cock such as yourself."

Byakuya shrugs out of his captain's haori and throws it over a railing at the edge of the sixth-division courtyard.

"I thought you were an examiner for Ichimaru-fukutaichou," he answers absently.

"Ah, so I was," Kyoraku admits with a sly sideways glance, "strange fellow, don't you think?"

"He had an unusual look about him," Byakuya agrees. His bokken is elegantly inlaid with mother of pearl and threads of silver. Both hands on the hilt, he extends it before him, splitting his field of vision with a single stroke of polished wood.

"An unusual look, yes. Not everyone can be as handsome as I am, after all," Kyoraku grins crookedly. He flicks the brim of his wide hat upward and raises his bokken as well, preparing to engage.

The wood of their weapons meets with a resounding crack. Pigeons flutter upward from the eaves and disperse into the grey autumn sky. Byakuya slings Kyoraku's bokken to the left with a powerful stroke. The older captain grins.

"And you, Byakuya-sama? What've you been up to?" He dips beneath a hissing swipe of Byakuya's bokken and catches its tip with a parry of his own.

"Very little," Byakuya replies evenly. When his bokken again meets Kyoraku's the force of the strike resonates in his shoulders.

"Really?" Kyoraku ducks under a swift strike, "I'm surprised. Family like yours, I'd think they'd be hawking you to remarry right about now."

There is something about the electric chill in the air and the relative seclusion of the courtyard that loosens Byakuya's reticence. When he whirls around on his heel to catch another of Kyoraku's offensive strikes, he does so with force and relish, jaw clenched tightly.

"And if they are?" he counters.

"Will you?" Kyoraku grinds his heels into the gravel to hold his ground.

"Should I?" The question is more honest than rhetorical. Kyoraku hums low in his throat and swings his bokken in a wide arc.

"I think not," he says abruptly. Byakuya hesitates before advancing toward an opening in the other captain's stance.

"Kyoraku-taichou suggesting temperance," he remarks, "and I had felt the eclipse rare."

Kyoraku grins and bears down on Byakuya's latest parry.

"It's not a matter of temperance," he practically spits the word, "but rather a matter of difference. Women are not like us, Byakuya."

"Is that so?" Byakuya sneers, and in his eyes there is a glimmer of his former self that Kyoraku is glad to see.

"Of course," he says, and momentarily withdraws, running the back of his hand over his brow. Even in the persistent cool of late autumn, Byakuya's alacrity has him sweating. He licks his lips and goes on:

"Think on it, no? They bring you some virgin girl, and day in, day out, she tries to win your love. Pours your tea just so, combs her hair just so. She grows sorrowful, bitter, and all the while she never knows that you have no love to give her. Women aren't like us, Byakuya-sama. They are patient, dreadfully patient."

"Patient," the young man repeats, as if tasting the word.

Two sixth division recruits in black haori appear in the doorways of the courtyard bearing trays of sake. Byakuya lowers his bokken and invites them to enter with a wave of his arm. Immediately they gravitate to Kyoraku's charming familiarity, and Byakuya finds that he, too, has found some peculiar solace in the man's advice.

He slips his captain's haori back over his shoulders and graciously declines a wooden saucer of sake. A gust of cold air accompanies him back into the sixth division headquarters.

* * *

It is the dark night of autumn, with bright stars and no fireflies. There is silence among the withered reeds. Gin passes soundlessly through the dry underbrush, leaves scattering in his wake.

The moon glows cold and bright overhead, casting weird shadows through the naked branches. In the summer and spring, this forest canopy is thick enough to darken the brush at midday, but no longer.

Gin stalks the forest aimlessly, seething with fury. He thinks he will kill anyone he comes upon, and perhaps more, if the mood catches him. His appetite is for flesh and blood, and if he cannot have one, he must indulge in the other.

Tonight, he knows, Aizen will look in on Rangiku to see whether or not they are together. As his designs on the throne of heaven have grown, so has his suspicion of those who might spoil delicately unfolding plans.

And so Gin abandons her, like he has before, and like he will again: without any word or explanation, without apology, without any indication of regret. He will weather his solitude alone in the woods, where he believes that he has wandered into a dream. Among the sparse trees at the edge of the forest is a grave, and kneeling before it is the slender figure of an academy student.

The white kosode catches the wan light of the moon like a mirror. Between the sloping shoulders Gin can see a shining cascade of pale blond hair. He stills, his breath misty frost in the cold air, and watches.

"It's you, isn't it?" the mourner asks. He does not look over his shoulder.

"It's Gin," answers the man himself, and then, curiously: "how'd you guess?"

"I don't know," comes the soft reply.

Gin thinks: _that's how life is, always going over the same bridges, over and over again – _

Kira sits back and runs his hand over his eyes. Gin draws near without sound, approaching until his shadow envelops the young man. The air is still and chilled and smells strongly of sweet decaying leaves and sake.

"Shouldn't you be watchin' the eclipse with all those academy pals o' yours?" Gin prods. Kira shrugs noncommittally.

"I come here often," he admits, though the question didn't require it. He drapes his arms around his knees as Gin lowers himself to sit beside him.

"Hope you didn't get in trouble the other night."

"No, none at all," Kira laughs half-heartedly, and Gin can see that even when he smiles there is an undercurrent of sad timorousness lacing all of his features and gestures. He is one of those people, Gin decides, who has inside themselves a bottomless well of sorrow that never dries, and he bears it with remarkable grace.

"It's good, though," Kira adds weakly, after a moment, "not having to watch it alone."

Something inside him seems deeply resigned. Gin is adept at sinking his fingers into gaps in resolve and shredding it from there, but in this man there seems to be no conviction at all. It draws him in like a void, like a moonless sky.

"Aah," Gin says, "it's beginning."

Kira looks up. As a black shadow falls over the face of the autumn moon, Gin's cold fingers slip inside the boy's kosode, ghosting over his chest and lingering on a tightened pink nipple. Blue eyes drift shut, and young lips part slightly, expelling a breath that flows into the night white and misty, like a ghost. By now Gin is well practiced in the folds and ties of academy uniforms, and he puts his skill to use in baring the boy's slender chest and hips to the autumn night. His fingers circle the hardening shaft, and his lips linger near the delicate shell of an ear.

Somewhere, Rangiku is alone. Perhaps she has already left the little house at the end of the overgrown dirt path, resigned to the fact that Gin will not be coming. Yet she may also still be there, waiting, looking up at the darkened moon. Some part of her always will be there, and yet the most terrible fact of all of all is that she will forgive Gin, and he is aware of this.

And Kira will forgive him, too, even as he is stripped of his virginity on the grave of his father under the blackest sky of the year.

* * *

The shadow passes and the face of the bright moon is again visible on the glassy surface of the brook. Byakuya leans on the arched bridge and gazes down into the water as it flows beneath his feet, glimpsing ivory and gold opalescence as his koi rush downstream.

The water washes the silver reflection of the risen moon along with it, disappearing into the dark pool of the lower garden pond, where it flows onward toward winter.

One way or another, Byakuya thinks as he crosses the threshold into his manor, he will meet it there.

* * *

**More soon! Thanks a million for reading; please review!**


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